How do you build high-performance virtual teams?

Building High-Performance Virtual Teams And the Best Way of Doing the Same

Working remotely has been on the rise for a while and the pandemic has only accelerated the momentum. And when it comes to remote working, one of the biggest challenges is building and managing highly functional teams that operate in a cohesive manner alike a well-oiled machine due to the restrictions of meeting together and henceforth all the communication, brainstorming and collaboration being moved behind a screen.

This article offers you all the steps you need to take in the direction of making your new team an operational one.

1. Virtual Team Building Games

High-performance teams have amazing coordination and are great at collaboration. And this is obtained by virtual team building games. Virtual team building games enable the team members to open up about themselves and this allows trust to be ensued. These activities form a strong unbreakable foundation in doing so.

Along with that, virtual team building activities are also really helpful in letting the creative juices flow, so as to say. These activities are devised in a way that requires quick thinking and creative perspective. This activated the creative areas of the brain, allowing the team members to unlock their creative potential.

Additionally, these activities enhance collaboration by more than a mile due to the planning, strategizing, coordinating, and executing they require, amongst many other things.

2. Virtual Weekly Meetings

Keep virtual weekly meetings where everyone and each team is involved. This allows everyone to be updated about what is going on and also moves ahead collaboration by a notch. These meetings open the floor for allowing inputs and ideas to be shared and improvised through active conversation.

These meetings help the inclusion of every member and encourage them to give their opinion no matter how small or simple it is.

Due to this, collaboration improves as the members gain confidence over their ideas and become more willing, and actually persistent, to share their inputs and ideas or advice over any task. These meetings are also really helpful in making the employees feel like they are a part of something important and that they belong somewhere, which everyone consciously or unconsciously longs for.

3. Keep Checking-In but Don’t Micromanage

As a manager, you need to keep checking in on what the employees have been doing. As you may already know, it’s essential to keep checking in on the employees and keep track of the work done and their progress. If you stop checking in, the team might feel less encouraged to continue at the same pace that they worked in.

But what’s really important here is to avoid micromanaging. You have to keep track of what is going on in the team rather than what every individual is doing. Have daily reports, weekly reports, progress sheets — all of it. But don’t have all of that for every member of the team. Not only will that be exhausting, but also the employees might feel extremely scrutinized.

They might get a feeling that you don’t trust them and that is not something you want them thinking as it will make the employees wary and distant from you even in a working relationship.

4. Have monthly discourses

This is rather a great way to build a stronger and more efficient team. Discourses or thoughtful and insightful discussions are a great way of getting to know the other team members by knowing and acknowledging their thoughts and opinions about a general subject. It also enhances analytical and critical thinking which is of utmost importance in any work-related tasks.

Furthermore, it also helps to build a steady form of communication that helps make a strong relationship. Trust forms and the employees feel more comfortable around each other, leading to improvement in communication.

5. Acknowledge and Reward Achievements

For anyone, it is important that their work is being recognized. No one likes to be underappreciated or taken for granted for all the work they put in and the loyalty to the company they display. When they think that they aren’t appreciated enough or that their work isn’t recognized, they would lose motivation to continue with the same vigour, put in fewer efforts and not work as efficiently as they once did. It’s common for them to start looking for another job.

To avoid that, acknowledge small achievements, good work is done or great ideas given by the employees. A few words really go a long way because all that an employee wants is an appreciation of his contribution and presence in the company.

Have monthly rewards for a few things and not only employee of the month if your teams are bigger to make everyone feel that you had given a fair chance. There can also be trivia awards given, nothing big, for some of the other employees in the team. This also gives them the motivation and an extra push to strive harder in work.

Conclusion

These are some of the conventional and non-conventional ways in which you can achieve high performing teams. They are highly effective as they improve communication, collaboration, productivity and enhance analytical, critical and creative skills.

They are perfect for both small and big teams due to their flexibility in receiving the audience. One can never go wrong with these when it comes to making your team efficient, productive, creative and motivated.

Click on the link to get more interesting and fun virtual team building activity ideas.